Public administration’s debt (government debt) stood at RON 651.508
billion in October 2022, compared to RON 646.073 billion in September
and RON 577.521 billion at the end of 2021, according to data published
by the Ministry of Finance. As a percentage of GDP, government debt
grew to 48%, from 47.6% the previous month. Medium- and long-term debt
was RON 623.967 billion in October, while short-term debt amounted to
RON 27.54 billion. Government securities accounted for most of this
debt, namely RON 535.01 billion. Borrowed sums totaled RON 103.29
billion.
Banca Transilvania has revised its projections regarding the evolution
of Romania’s economy and has forecast more moderate GDP growth, of 4.6%
in 2022 and 2.4% in 2023, compared to 5.1% in 2021, due to the impact
of overlapping supply-related shocks and to the events in Ukraine and
their consequences. Private consumption (the main component of GDP) is
expected to decelerate from 7.1% in 2021 to 5.6% in 2022 and 3.3% in
2023, given that the high inflationary pressures have a negative impact
on population’s real available income.
Romania has the most stable economy in the region and ended 2022 with
over 5% economic growth, according to Finance Minister Adrian Câciu,
who has warned that 2023 will be a difficult year, still marked by
inflationary pressure and during which the maximum use of public policy
instruments, directed towards investments, reforms and support for
vulnerable groups will make a difference. He has pointed out that the
economic potential was restored and economy was stabilized in 2022,
with economy having produced RON 214 billion more than in 2021.
At the end of December 2022, CEC Bank had obtained Luxembourg Stock
Exchange’s approval for the multi-annual bond issues prospectus and
last week, it successfully placed the first tranches, through a private
placement to professional investors, in RON and euro, whose total value
amounted to RON 656.6 million. CEC Bank can issue several types of
bonds (senior unsecured, subordinated or eligible bonds for the minimum
requirement for own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL) within the
approved prospectus.
Onix Asigurări remained the leader of the guarantee insurance segment
in H1/2022, with a volume of gross written premiums of RON 48.4
million, down by 44% year-on-year, but with a market share of nearly
35%, according to data published by the Financial Supervisory Authority
(ASF) in the report on the evolution of the insurance market in
H1/2022. Onix Asigurări took the lead of the guarantee insurance
segment as early as the first half of 2021, when bankrupt City
Insurance, which was still listed in ASF’s report, was already showing
signs of inevitable collapse.
Bank lending to euro zone companies slowed in November, easing back
from the sector’s biggest borrowing binge in over a decade as rising
interest rates and a looming recession appear to be taking a toll,
European Central Bank data showed on Thursday. Lending to businesses in
the 19-country euro area expanded by 8.4% in November after an 8.9%
reading a month earlier while household credit growth slowed to 4.1%
from 4.2%.
Ministry of Finance approved RON 2.8 billion state aid for 65
investment projects in 2022, according to a press release issued by the
institution. The projects are worth about RON 8 billion and will
generate more than 9,500 new jobs. The state aid funding was granted
through the two schemes administered by the Ministry, namely Government
Decree 807/2014 on the establishment of state aid schemes aimed at
boosting investments with a major impact on economy and Government
Decree 332/2014 on the establishment of a state aid scheme to support
investments promoting regional development through jobs creation.
ETI European Food Industries, part of the Turkish group ETI, received
an over RON 118 million (about EUR 25 million) capital infusion in
November, according to data from the Trade Register Office. Production
at the ETI plant started in 2016 following more than EUR 50 million
investments. Romania is the group’s first investment outside Turkey and
the biggest investment from scratch in the sweets production sector in
the past decade. Moreover, ETI European Food Industries has submitted a
project to Dolj Environmental Protection Agency to change the use of a
building from a storage building to a production and storage building,
according to the institution’s website. The project presents several
changes that part of the production unit near Craiova will undergo.
Minister of Development, Public Works and Administration, Cseke Attila,
has signed 130 new financing contracts, submitted within the first call
for projects for the C10 - Local Fund component of the National
Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). According to a press release
issued by the Ministry of Development on Friday, the contracts were
signed between local public authorities from 127
administrative-territorial units and the Ministry of Development, have
a total value of RON 323,321,674.35 and are aimed at ensuring the
infrastructure for green transport, through the construction of bicycle
(and other light electric vehicles) lanes at local/metropolitan level
and the acquisition of charging points for electric vehicles.
The Presidential Administration has announced that President Klaus
Iohannis has filed a constitutional challenge to the Constitutional
Court of Romania (CCR) regarding the Law approving the Government
Emergency Ordinance on the management of ports and waterways, the use
of public naval transport infrastructures, as well as the conduct of
shipping activities in ports and on inland waterways, and completing an
article of the Competition Law. The law was reanalyzed by Parliament
upon the President’s request.
Four MPs from the Alliance for Romanians’ Unity, including party leader
George Simion, have submitted a draft law to the Senate amending the
adoption law so that seafarers can also adopt children from orphanages,
even if they are temporarily absent from the country. The AUR
initiators argue that, in its current form, the text is clearly
discriminatory against Romanian citizens residing in Romania who are
temporarily absent from the country in order to carry out specific
activities in the maritime sector. The draft law was registered with
the Senate, as the first notified body, and the Chamber of Deputies is
the decision-making body.
EU countries will meet next week to discuss a joint response to
travellers from China amid concern over the country’s explosion of
Covid cases, incoming EU presidency holder Sweden announced Saturday
(31 December). Stockholm, which takes over the rotating EU presidency
on 1 January, said it had called a meeting of the Council’s crisis
management mechanism IPCR for Wednesday.
The gross minimum wage in economy will grow to RON 3,000 starting from
1 January 2023. Over 2 million employees will benefit from this
increase. The minimum wage in the constructions sector will be RON
4,000, from RON 3,000 previously, when it was exempt from the payment
of taxes and social security contributions. At the beginning of
December 2023, the government had approved the decision on the increase
in the minimum gross wage in Romania, from RON 2,550 to RON 3,000 per
month as of 1 January 2023.
The National Institute of Statistics (INS) has published the first
flash data for the 2021 round of the Population and Housing Census. It
shows that Romania’s resident population was 19,053,800 at the end of
2021, of whom: 9,808,300 (51.5%) were female and 9,941,200 (52.2%)
lived in urban areas. Romania lost 1,067,800 inhabitants compared to
the resident population recorded in the previous census (RPL2011). The
number of inhabitants decreased in 39 of the 42 counties in Romania
(including Bucharest).